Thursday 20 November at 18:45 : Adrian Sutil isn’t too bothered by all the rumours concerning the Force India cockpits. “I’ve got everything wrapped up,” he confirmed during testing in Barcelona. He even saw the test drive by McLaren reserve Pedro de la Rosa as a positive indicator. “The very first day was here, he was able to tell us where the shortcomings were,” revealed Sutil in conversation with Motorsports Magazine.com. Hardly music to the ears of team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella.

For his part though, the self-confident young German was quite happy to compare himself to the McLaren test driver: “We drove the same programme and I was faster than Pedro by 1.2 seconds I’m used to the car and I quite like it when it gets twitchy. If I were driving a McLaren, it might be a different story, but even so, I would still be fast.”

Sutil will get a foretaste of what it’s like to drive a McLaren from late February onwards when the new Force India makes its debut with McLaren finesse and with a Mercedes engine under the bonnet. What pleases him most about this is “that we’ve now got a working relationship with a factory and we’re not just importing engines.” So that will make a change from the current set-up with Ferrari. And it should make for a dramatically improved car.